Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Swarzak, acquired at the trade deadline from the rebuilding Chicago White Sox, bolstered the Milwaukee Brewers’ bullpen down the stretch as the they made a push for a National League wild-card spot. He finished 6-4 with a 2.33 ERA and two saves in 70 relief appearances combined with Milwaukee and the White Sox.

The 32-year-old right-hander spent the first five seasons of his major league career with the Minnesota Twins after his second-round selection in the 2004 amateur draft. He also has ...

The Cardinals have been viewed as the frontrunners to land Ozuna, according to MLB.com’s Joe Frisaro, and a possible deal is expected to include two of the three of pitching prospects Jack Flaherty (St. Louis’ No. 3 prospect, according to MLBPipeline.com), Dakota Hudson (No. 8) and Sandy Alcantara (No. 9), in addition to a replacement in the outfield in either Stephen Piscotty or Randal Grichuk.

Even those fluent in scouting and analytics find Hosmer’s case to be infuriatingly difficult to parse. How does one team’s internal scouting reports grade Hosmer’s glove as an 80 – a top-of-the-charts elite mark – while the publicly available defensive metrics regularly rate him among the game’s worst first basemen?

“In my heart, he’s a $100 million player,” one general manager said. “In my head, I’m not so ...

This doesn’t seem as big a deal as the Twitter reaction suggests. Of course, most things aren’t as big a deal as Twitter reactions suggest.

When reached late Tuesday, Angels general manager Billy Eppler told Yahoo Sports: “Shohei underwent a thorough physical with MRI scans to both his elbow and his shoulder. Those are scans we conduct whenever we sign a pitcher. Based on the readings of those MRIs, there are not signs of acute trauma in the elbow. It looks consistent with players his age. We ...

1. At least to this point, the Cardinals have made it very clear that they prefer to add impact talent through trades, rather than take a costly dive into the deep end of the free-agent pool. Of course, their philosophy could shift, based on, among other things, supply and demand and desperation. But if they plan to stay out of the expensive section of free agency, they’re eliminating a way to get better; putting a limit on their options; and ...

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Rather than risk yet another concussion, Scott has decided to retire at 58.

“I’m done,” he told the Associated Press.

The veteran crew chief missed nearly the entire 2017 season after a foul ball off the bat of Baltimore slugger Mark Trumbo in Toronto on April 14 caught him hard in the mask, causing Scott’s second concussion in nine months and fourth in five years.

Grover Cleveland Alexander, one of the greatest pitchers in the history of baseball, and William Killefer, catcher, yesterday were purchased by the Chicago club of the National League from the Philadelphia team of the same organization…From a source close to William F. Baker, president of the Philadelphia club, it was learned that $50,000 had changed hands in the deal. In addition to the cash consideration the Philadelphia club got Mike Prendergast, a pitcher, ...

Who is the hardest hitter in baseball today? The question conjures the names of Gavvy Cravath, Luderus, Cy Williams, Wally Pipp, Bob Veach, Joe Jackson and other kinds in extra base land.
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Eight out of 10 pitchers when asked whom they considered the longest hitter, declared without much hesitation in favor of Babe Ruth.

“A bunt with that fellow is a double,” one of them said. “Every time he is up there I wonder how many boards he will knock off the fence.” ...

If you are asking your starters to pitch fewer innings per start, why not move to the four-man rotation?

“I think we will get through the offseason and look at where our personnel is before we determine usage,” Daniels said Sunday. “I’ve said there are benefits to a six-man rotation and to a four-man. And there are benefits to a five-man rotation, too. But we’ve got to see where we are.”

“I grew up in Mississippi. Every father I knew, if he saw a guy like Roy Moore in his 30s trying to date his 16-year-old daughter, he would have had a date with a baseball bat,” Stevens, a former aide to Mitt Romney’s campaign, said on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.”

Stevens, who worked on former Alabama Gov. Bob Riley’s (R) primary campaign against Moore in 2006, said Moore has violated the “decency standard” of civil society in his previous alleged pursuit of teenage girls.

Stanton and Judge are from the same cloth, modest, respectful, thoughtful. They’re now the biggest show in baseball. Red Sox fans do not want to waste an Advent Sunday thinking about the potential of having four lefthanded starts in their rotation against them, plus Sanchez and Torres…or the reminder from one Yankee official that Frazier and Miguel Andujar will be in there sometime this season.

Oh yes, and Cashman and Steinbrenner have them under the luxury tax threshold, so instead of ...

“If history tells you anything, it’s that there’s always more activity when we all get together,” he said. “In this particular case because it has been a slow to develop market, I think there will be a flurry of action because there has been so little to this point. My guess as we get closer to this weekend, history tells us, that as teams start to make their way toward the winter meetings that there tends to be an uptick in the activity. I’d be surprised if that wouldn’t be the ...